SteeMan

Please don't double post

Armbian doesn't have a process to make regular releases to kernels in the stable channel.

It looks like that box uses the amlogic s802 cpu. That is the old 32bit cpu from amlogic. No work has been done with that cpu for years. The current builds only support the s905 64bit cpu family.

In looking at beta.armbian.com/content.html base-files appears to be missing from the bullseye, mantic and sid repositories. It is present in bookworm, jammy, noble and trixie.

Have you tried looking at this info?

13.03 image of what? That is how Armbian works. There is not option to change that behavior.

Technically the user space you are using is Debian Stretch. Armbian provides the boot environment and linux kernel, the user space comes from either Debian or Ubuntu (depending on the version you choose to install). From the Debian release page: : "Debian 9.13 was released July 18th, 2020. Debian 9.0 was initially released on June 17th, 2017. The release included many major changes, described in our press release and the Release Notes. Debian 9 (stretch) has been superseded by Debian 10 (buster). Security updates have been discontinued as of July 6th, 2020." So Debian stretch stopped being supported over three years ago. Armbian generally follows similar time lines to the underlying support of the Debian or Ubuntu user spaces. The message you are getting is because Armbian recently cleaned up the support status of these older releases. So even though no updates have been created for the Armbian parts for likely years, you didn't have any message that you weren't getting any updates until the recent change. The reality is that you need to upgrade your system. You haven't received any security updates for years.

@fever_wits I just want to point out if you don't already know, the board you have isn't supported by Armbian. It is community maintained. That means there is no one specifically that has responsibility for the board. It is up to people who read these forums to respond if they have an interest. So don't expect any specific response in any specific time frame. Having said that, this is the correct place to post questions, observations, and hopefully solutions to issues with your board. Armbian provides community builds as a service but doesn't have the resources to test or in anyway to support them. So fixes/changes happen only as community members contribute them via PRs to armbian. If no one contributes, over time the quality of a board degrades and when it stops building it then gets removed from armbian all together.

The script that displays that info is: /etc/update-motd.d/10-armbian-header

This is certainly possible. The level of difficulty depends on exactly what you mean by 'using a different kernel'. Start with https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Welcome The basic Armbian kernel build process is to start with a kernel git tree, apply a bunch of patches that are missing from said tree (usually patches that haven't yet made it to mainline), combine with a kernel specific config file and build the resulting kernel. So depending on what the differences are between your 'different kernel' and what Armbian builds, you could insert your different kernel into any/all of those areas (i.e. you could add the missing patches that other kernel has, you could fix/change the kernel config to add/removed features, or you could use an entirely different git kernel source tree, or a combination of these three). The key would be to figure out what is different between the Armbian and other kernel that is relevant for your board. Ideally this could be done as a PR to Armbian to add better support for that board into Armbian.

Moved post to unsupported/community maintained. This is not a supported board. My mistake, misread the post. This is pine64 not pinebook a64. That board should be supported but the forum structure isn't up to date. I have added the correct tag for the post, but left it in the original locatation.

You can try them all. But it may be the case that none of them work. I just did a search of the forum archives, no one has ever reported getting armbian working on your box. You seemed to have some success with the ophub fork, so you could try using their dtb with armbian or just trying their builds.

Shouldn't you be using the odroidhc4 images?

No that is not normal at that point. Most likely the dtb you are trying isn't compatible with your hardware. I would suggest trying other dtbs

If you click the button on that page labeled: Community Maintained Builds? (it is just above the selectors for all of the builds), then on the github page that link takes you to, click on Download Latest Image? Or to save you the work you could use the link at the top of the FAQ instructions. Or just go here: https://github.com/armbian/community/releases (latest build is 211, note they are listed in alpha order so the newest is not at the top)

Use the u-boot-s905x3 found in the current rolling releases. Why are you trying to use an old archived release?

It uses a different filesystem identifier that windows doesn't understand/ support.

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first https://forum.armbian.com/topic/33676-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus

Ophub is a fork of Armbian. They use the Armbian name without permission. They do not contribute to Armbian development nor do they participate in these forums. You need to contact them for support of their software. We can't help you here.

Where are you getting these images? That second one isn't anything from Armbian.

What exact version? Yes you can try different dtbs.

Try a different SD card. I've seen this happening more recently, especially with high capacity SD cards.

Providing logs with armbianmonitor -u helps with troubleshooting and significantly raises chances that issue gets addressed. This doesn't look like an Armbian kernel. What image are you using?

I'd recommend submitting PRs for what you think is necessary. You will get better feedback there than here in the forum as more developers follow the GitHub activity than the forums.

I'd recommend starting by submitting PRs for the board. Build up some knowledge and experience with Armbian development and processes. Then when you feel comfortable with the requirements expected of a maintainer, make that final commitment (https://docs.armbian.com/Board_Maintainers_Procedures_and_Guidelines/)